You won’t have to be in Viera on Dec. 23 to take part in Run Run Santa over the course of a mile, near Calvary Chapel on Stadium Parkway, or in Vero Beach to do the same thing Christmas Eve.

You don’t have to don the red shirt/coat, shorts, belt, beard and hat with more than 1,000 other people, including some of the area’s best runners and winter visitors with them.

You don’t even have to be at the finish line to pick up that snazzy new medal. You can do it in the neighborhood, or at a different race. You can do it on the sidewalks of New York or the sands of Afghanistan.

In fact, you can Run Run Santa anywhere, thanks to Mark Petrillo.

He is the founder and owner of Virtual Strides, a website through which people run “where they want, when they want” by registering for the races of their choice, completing the distance involved and then uploading their times.

Registration generates numbered, digital race bibs, though they’re not required of runners, and you can get them printed, if you want, and the ribbons and medals are “really big and really great,” in Petrillo’s words.

Furthermore, $5 from every registration fee received by VS goes to the charitable cause supported by the race involved, and for Run Run Santa, that means Power of Pizza Charities, the organization which, like the races, is the product of Viera Pizza owner Mike Acosta and marketer extraordinaire Brittany Streufert, both of whom also are accomplished runners.

Some runners, however, must forego the holiday breakfast, gifts and post-race revelry.

“We realize that we have a whole fan base that will be at (the races), but some just can’t make it, for whatever reason,” said Acosta, with Streufert also the brains behind the massively successful Eat My Crust 5K, another race-with-party that draws about 1,000 runners to Viera every May. “So we decided to do a virtual event through Virtual Strides.”

Petrillo, formerly race director of Brevard’s biggest annual 5K race, the Turtle Krawl, started Virtual Strides “because I needed to do something on the side” while working in information technology at Florida Institute of Technology.

“Because the Turtle Krawl was known for its shirts and fancy medals, we’d get questions from people about whether they could do that race virtually and still get the shirts and medals,” he said. “I thought that if this many people were reaching out to me about this, there must be a market.”

So he founded Virtual Strides in his home, and now it is a full-time job, not a non-profit organization, but a small business that registers participants for stand-alone virtual races, or in partnership with actual races like RRS. Other partner races have included the likes of Boots for Troops, the Rainbow Run 5K, Paws for the Law and the X Run and the One America Appeal, and they happen nationwide.

Every month brings a new recipient – Power of Pizza aside, this month’s beneficiary is Southernmost Point’s Seacamp Association in the Florida Keys – and the organizations are lining up to get Petrillo’s attention.

“We have more than 150 charities on our waiting list,” he said. “We’ll help any organization form its own virtual race, and I do all the work, for a fee.”

The results have been donations that now amount to nearly a half million dollars according to Petrillo, who having organized and marketed the Turtle Krawl for the Sea Turtle Preservation Society for years, understands the requirements of working with nonprofits.

“We are 100 percent transparent with our donations and post receipts and/or acknowledgement letters after each donation is made,” he said. “Donations are made within 24 hours of the end of each virtual race period.”

And so you can Run, Run Santa in your red suit and beard on the treadmill in the den, if you want.

Petrillo likely will not.

“I will probably run it,” he said, having romped to the finish last year with his wife, frequent Space Coast Runners Female Runner of the Year candidate Lisa Petrillo, who won her overall (as opposed to invitational) division at the inaugural race.

“Virtual racing is great, but you don’t get that race experience; you don’t get hundreds or thousands of people around you; you don’t get the same experience,” he said. “I haven’t run much lately, but I like this race and it’s only a mile. I’ll probably do Run Run Santa.”